Haworth Jack Image 1 Brighton & Hove Albion 1909

Description

Turton, Lancashire born left half Jack Haworth was playing for Lancashire Combination club Turton when he was recommended to Southern League club Brighton & Hove Albion by Brighton’s captain, Joe Leeming, who also came from the Turton area. Haworth turned professional with Brighton in 1909 and helped Brighton win the 1909-10 Southern League Championship and also was a member of the Albion team that won the 1910 FA Charity Shield when they beat League Champions Aston Villa 1-0 at Stamford Bridge that September. In the five years that the Charity Shield was contested by the winners of the Football League and Southern League between 1908 and 1912, this was the only occasion on which the Southern League Champions prevailed. The victory remains Brighton & Hove Albion’s only national honour to date.

After 7 goals in 81 appearances for The Seagulls he was sold to First Division club Middlesbrough for £600 in February 1912, making his Football League debut against Woolwich Arsenal the same month. But he failed to make much impression at left half and played only twice in 1912-13 before converting to right back, where he was a regular from December 1913 until the suspension of peacetime football due to the onset of the First World War in May 1915, by when he had made 64 appearances for Middlesbrough. In September 1915, Haworth enlisted in The Royal Engineers as a blacksmith and served in France, and after the War he joined Lancashire Combination club Chorley in 1919, helping them to win the 1919-20 Lancashire Combination title, and he moved to Darwen in 1920, his final club before his eventual retirement.